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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Tryon to William Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne
Tryon, William, 1729-1788
March 05, 1768
Volume 07, Pages 692-693

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[From Tryon's Letter Book.]
Letter from Governor Tryon to Earl Shelburne,

Brunswick 5th March 1768.

I have the honor herewith to transmit to your Lordship the Journals of the last session of the House of Assembly, wherein is a transaction that is without precedent in this government. Mr Crawford one of the burgesses directed a letter to the House, inserted in the Journals (folio 77) requesting leave to resign his seat therein, the resignation was accepted, and an address sent to me desiring I would order a writ to issue for the election of a new member in the room of Mr Crawford: This address I laid before his Majesty's Council, for advice on a subject of so delicate a nature. They were unanimously of opinion (as appears on the minutes of the Council Journals of the first of this month) that the resignation was unprecedented, and advised therefore, I should wait for his Majesty's instructions on this point, In consequence whereof I hope to be honored with his Majesty's commands before the next General Assembly, for as I am of opinion this address was presented to me on the full conviction, that the House had a right to accept the resignation of any of their members, so on the other hand I am inclined to believe they will readily relinquish this claim when they find it unwarranted by any usage of Parliament

Every other transaction I flatter myself will be found to have been conducted with great regularity and harmony. The marginal notes will readily direct your Lordship to the principal matters in these Journals.

The inclosed estimate of the expences in running the western frontier line of this province, will state the particular charges thereof. I defrayed my own expences while on that service, and carried them to the account of the satisfaction and amusement I experienced in the tour, and the discovery I made of our increasing body of industrious inhabitants, happily settled in a healthy and luxuriant clime and soil. From this experience I am of opinion it is the face and situation of a country rather than the degrees of its latitude which makes it healthy or sickly.

I beg leave to observe that the great attention which has been paid by the General Assembly at this last session for the happier establishment of the civil government of this country, and their generous

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liberality both by their Acts and Resolves for the support of the same, has not its parallel in the annals of North Carolina, It is my sanguine wish therefore that the business of this last session may be found to merit his Majesty's approbation, and that he will be graciously pleased to relieve the great inconveniences his subjects here labor under as well for want of a medium to pay the public taxes, as to carry on trade, and further that this province, now emerging from obscurity and rising into credit, may experience a peculiar share of his Majesty's most gracious countenance and protection.

I am, &ca