Worcester Loyalists Protest the Committee of Safety

A Protest by the Worcester, Massachusetts, Selectmen (1774)

As tensions in the colonies grew, committees of correspondence rapidly emerged as extra-legal governments, sharing information and news and enforcing Patriot policies such as colonial boycotts of British imports. Many Loyalists worried about the activities of these unelected and unaccountable groups. In 1774, the selectmen in Worcester, Massachusetts, demanded that those connected to the committee submit to a public examination of their papers and actions. This motion was defeated, but a protest by Loyalists, reproduced below, was entered into the public record and subsequently printed in the Boston papers. When Patriots became aware of this, they physically forced the town clerk, with inky fingers, to blot out the Loyalists’ protest.

At a meeting of the inhabitants of the Town of Worcester, held there on the 20th day of June, A. D. 1774, pursuant to an application made to the Selectmen by 43 voters and freeholders of the same town, dated the 20th day of May last, therein among other things, declaring their just apprehensions of the fatal consequences that may follow the many riotous and seditious actions that have of late times been done and perpetrated in divers places within this Province; the votes and proceedings of which meeting are by us deemed irregular and arbitrary:

Wherefore we, some of us who were petitioners for the said meeting, and others, inhabitants of the town, hereunto subscribing, thinking it our indispensable duty, in these times of discord and confusion in too many of the towns within this Province, to bear testimony in the most open and unreserved manner against all riotous, disorderly and seditious practices, must therefore now declare, that it is with the deepest concern for public peace and order, that we behold so many whom we used to esteem sober, peaceable men, so far deceived, deluded and led astray, by the artful, crafty and insidious practices of some evil-minded and ill-disposed persons, who, under the disguise of patriotism, and falsely styling themselves the friends of liberty, some of them neglecting their own proper business and occupation, in which they ought to be employed for the support of their families, spending their time in discoursing of matters they do not understand, raising and propagating falsehoods and calumnies of those men they look up to with envy, and on whose fall and ruin they wish to rise, intend to reduce all things to a state of tumult, discord and confusion.

And in pursuance of those evil purposes and practices, they have imposed on the understanding of some, corrupted the principles of others, and distracted the minds of many, who under the influence of this delusion, have been tempted to act a part that may prove, and that has already proved, extremely prejudicial to the Province, and as it may be, fatal to themselves; bringing into real danger, and in many instances destroying, that liberty and property we all hold sacred, and which they vainly and impiously boast of defending at the expense of their blood and treasure.

And as it appears to us that many of this town seem to be led aside by strange opinions, and are prevented coming to such prudent votes and resolutions as might be for the general good and the advantage of this town in particular, agreeably to the request of the petitioners for this meeting.

And as the town has refused to dismiss the persons styling themselves the Committee of Correspondence for the town, and has also refused so much as to call on them to render an account of their past dark and pernicious proceedings:

We therefore, whose names are hereunto Subscribed, do each of us declare and protest, it is our firm opinion, that the Committees of Correspondence in the several towns of this Province, being creatures of modern invention, and constituted as they be, are a legal grievance, having no legal foundation, contrived by a junto1 to serve particular designs and purposes of their own, and that they as they have been and are now managed in this town, are a nuisance. And we fear, it is in a great measure owing to the baneful influence of such committees, that the teas of immense value, lately belonging to the East India Company, were, not long since, scandalously destroyed in Boston, and that many other enormous acts of violence and opression have been perpetrated, whereby the lives of many honest worthy persons have been endangered and their property destroyed.

It is by these committees also, that papers have been lately published, and are now circulating through the Province, inviting and wickedly tempting all persons to join them, fully implying, if not expressly denouncing the destruction of all that refuse to subscribe those unlawful combinations, tending directly to sedition, civil war and rebellion.

These and all such enormities, we detest and abhor, and the authors of them we esteem enemies to our King and country, violators of all law and civil liberty, the malevolent disturbers of the peace of society, subverters of the established constitution, and enemies of mankind.

Worcester Town Records, From 1753 to 1783, ed. Franklin P. Rice (Worcester, MA: The Worcester Society of Antiquity, 1882), 230–232.

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