Governor Jonathan Belcher Promotes
Free Trade and Commerce
[The following shows that Governor
Jonathan Belcher was noted for being skilled in public policy matters, and that
he favored free enterprise, trade, and commerce. This article is from The
New England Weekly Journal, No. 179, Monday, August 24, 1730 (Boston:
Kneeland and Green, Printers).]
To His Excellency JONATHAN
BELCHER, Esq, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over His Majesty's
Provinces of the MASSACHUSETTS BAY in NEW ENGLAND, and etc.
The ADDRESS of the Merchants
of the Town of BOSTON, Aug. 19, 1730.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,
"WE the merchants of the town of BOSTON, do with the utmost alacrity congratulate Your Excellency's safe return to your native country, in the distinguishing character of His Majesty's Governor of this Province, which we esteem a signal mark of his royal favor, for which with all other instances of his royal beneficence, we shall study to manifest an unfeigned gratitude by our steady loyalty and obedience to our most gracious sovereign."
"We promise ourselves all the happy effects of Your Excellency's administration that can be expected from your consummate knowledge in public affairs and inviolable attachment to the privileges of this people [the American people], of which you have given very evident proofs; and as Your Excellency has always expressed a very tender regard for trade in its several branches, and so successively [successfully] asserted the just rights and privileges thereof, it affords us the firmest assurance that it will flourish under your happy influence."
"That Your Excellency may be long continued a blessing to your country in your exalted station, and the smiles of Heaven descend on your family, and that after this life you may be remunerated with the Divine favor in a better world, is the ardent desire of
YOUR EXCELLENCY'S
MOST OBEDIENT HUMBLE SERVANTS
To which Address His Excellency [Governor Jonathan Belcher] was pleased to make the following Answer:
GENTLEMEN,
THE first pleasure I conceive upon your kind congratulation, is to see it so full of duty and loyalty to the best of SOVEREIGNS: In the next place I return to my hearty thanks for the great esteem and respect with which you honor me. It is with an uncommon satisfaction that I now see you, my brethren, the representatives of the trade of this populous Province, to assure you that in the station the KING has placed me, I shall embrace every happy occasion [that] may fall in my power to countenance and protect the TRADE AND COMMERCE of this His Majesty's Province; and to see it revive and flourish under my administration will give me a continual joy. And I now make an invitation once for all, and tell you, my doors shall be always open not only to you, as the body of merchants, but to every private gentleman that shall have any thing to communicate for the greater happiness and prosperity of the trade of His Majesty's good subjects here.
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