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To the King's most excellent Majesty

May it please Your Majesty

We have lately received a letter from Arthur Dobbs Esq. Governor of Your Majesty's Province of North Carolina inclosing the copy of an Address presented by the Assembly of that Province to him setting forth the great inconveniences which the inhabitants would sustain by the repeal of several Acts whereby certain Towns and Counties have heretofore been erected and established within the said Province and by confirming

the respective rights of such Towns and Counties by Charter as proposed to Your Majesty in our humble Representation of 14 March 1754 and praying Your Maj. said Governor to cause these matters to be represented to Your Majesty in order to prevent the repeal of the said Laws or in case they should be already repealed to endeavour to obtain Your Maj. permission to pass other Acts for establishing the said Towns and Counties and confirming the rights and titles of the people as they now stand. We therefore beg leave humbly to lay before Your Majesty the annexed copy of the said Address and humbly to represent to Your Maj. thereupon.

That the several Laws referred to in the said Address are repealed by Your Maj. Order in Council dated 8 April 1754 and by the 16th Article of Your Maj. Instructions to Mr Dobbs he is directed to grant Charters of Incorporation to the several Towns and Counties erected by those Laws He informs us however that for the sake of promoting union and harmony in the present unsettled state of the Province he did not think it advisable to carry that Instruction into immediate execution and shall now defer it till Your Maj. pleasure may be known upon this request of the Assembly and he expresses his hopes that Your Maj. may be graciously pleased to indulge them in it because he finds that from the inconvenient laying out of many Counties and the largeness of others in the Western parts of the Province many subdivisions and alterations will be necessary as the inhabitants shall increase and therefore he apprehends the granting of charters may be productive of many inconveniences if it be true, as he is informed it is, that whence once a County is incorporated by charter it cannot afterwards be altered or subdivided without the consent of all the Inhabitants.

Your Maj. said Governor has further represented to us that the Assembly having acted with great temper prudence and unanimity and having testified a great zeal for Your Maj. service and the good of the Province appear to him deserving of your Royal favour and upon that account also he earnestly recommends their request.

For these reasons We would humbly propose that Your Majesty may be graciously pleased to give an Instruction to your said Governor authorizing and directing him to give his Assent to any Act or Acts for re-establishing the several Towns and Counties heretofore erected by the Laws which have been repealed as aforesaid, provided such new Acts be not liable to the objection on account of which we principally recommended the repeal of those formerly passed for those purpose namely the encroachment on Your Maj. prerogative in giving power to such Town or County to send Representatives to the Assembly and in ascertaining

the number of Representatives to be so sent and provided also that any other Laws which may have been passed in the said Province since the date of Your Maj. aforementioned Order of the 8th April 1754 or which might not at that time have been laid before Your Majesty by which any Counties or Townships may have been erected and empowered to send Representatives to the Assembly be repealed and other Laws passed for the same purposes not liable to that objection.

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