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LONDON, June 1, 1767. MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 20th past, from Dresden, where I am glad to find that you are arrived safe and sound. This has been everywhere an 'annus mirabilis' for bad weather, and it continues here still. Everybody has fires, and their winter clothes, as at Christmas. The town is extremely sickly; and sudden deaths have been very frequent.

To give a more solemn expression to the sense of parliament on this subject, the two houses entered into joint resolutions, condemning the measures pursued by the Americans; and agreed to an address, approving the conduct of the crown, giving assurances of effectual support to such farther measures as might be found necessary to maintain the civil magistrates in a due execution of the laws within the province of Massachusetts Bay, and beseeching his majesty to direct the governor of that colony to obtain and transmit information of all treasons committed in Massachusetts since the year 1767, with the names of the persons who had been most active in promoting such offences, that prosecutions might be instituted against them within the realm, in pursuance of the statute of the 35th of Henry VIII.

John, renamed Prince Edward Island in 1798, had been made a separate Government and had received an Assembly in 1773. Its one absorbing question was the tenure of land. On a single day in 1767 the British authorities had granted the whole island by lottery to army and navy officers and country gentlemen, on condition of the payment of small quitrents.

The atmosphere of his first ten years must have been very like that of his grandfather at the same age, from 1767 till 1776, barring the battle of Bunker Hill, and even as late as 1846, the battle of Bunker Hill remained actual. The tone of Boston society was colonial.

In the first months of the next year, 1767, he was attacked with an illness which for a time disabled him from attending the cabinet, being, apparently, the forerunner of that more serious malady which, before the end of the summer, compelled his long retirement from public life; and the Opposition took advantage of the state of disorganization and weakness which his illness caused among his colleagues, to defeat them on the Budget in the House of Commons, by an amendment to reduce the land-tax, which caused a deficiency in the supplies of half a million.

Although the air is excellent, the water is bad, and this may possibly be one of the causes which contributed to increase my habitual complaints. Towards the end of the autumn of 1767, I fell quite ill, and passed the whole winter in suffering almost without intermission. The physical ill, augmented by a thousand inquietudes, rendered these terrible.

Nor was it long before Chatham, a dispirited wreck, withdrew himself entirely from all active participation in affairs, shut himself up at Hayes, and refused to be seen by any one who wished to talk on business. On May 13, 1767, colonial agents and merchants trading to America were refused admission to hear the debates in the House of Commons. Upon that day Townshend was to develop his scheme.

The only pastor of the church who was not an author was the Rev. Dr. Scott, who died in 1767. In the Octagon Chapel the preachers had been still more distinguished. One of them was the Rev. Dr. Taylor, author of the famous Hebrew Concordance, which was published in two volumes folio, and was the labour of fourteen years.

Cook appears to have been employed, with the intervals of occasionally returning to England for the winter season, till the year 1767, which was the last time that he went out upon his station of marine surveyor of Newfoundland. It must not be omitted, that, while he occupied this post, he had an opportunity of exhibiting to the Royal Society a proof of his progress in the study of astronomy.

Of the 261 souls that comprised the population of the township in 1767, all were natives of America with the exception of six English, ten Irish, four Scotch and six Germans. The majority were of Puritan stock and members of the congregationalist churches of Massachusetts. Scarcely had they settled themselves in their new possessions when they began the organization of a church. Dr.