Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 195

Price Realized: $ 488
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--PRELUDE.) Issue of the Cambridge Chronicle, including a non-discussion of the petition from Continental Congress. Volume XIII, #640. 4 pages, 19 x 12 1/2 inches, on one folding sheet; inked revenue stamp in lower left corner, minor soiling along fore-edge, minor wear to inner lower corner. Cambridge, England, 28 January 1775
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On 25 October 1774, the Continental Congress approved a petition to the King, protesting the Intolerable Acts and humbly offering a path to peace in the colonies. It arrived in London on 14 November, but was not formally presented to Parliament until 19 January, when as Benjamin Franklin wrote "It came down among a great Heap of letters of Intelligence from Governors and officers in America, Newspapers, Pamphlets, Handbills, etc., from that Country, the last in the List, and was laid upon the Table with them, undistinguished by any particular Recommendation of it to the Notice of either House." This newspaper describes the deliberations of both houses of Parliament on that day. Much as Franklin stated, the House of Commons was faced with "several bundles of American papers. . . . Lord North answered by declaring he had brought all the papers in a bag, and that he had not examined them. . . . Lord North then moved, that the said papers might lie on the table for inspection." In the House of Lords, the members complained "that the papers had been detained above six weeks." The debate on the American question then proceeded with great vigor, but without any direct mention of the petition. The colonists never received a response to their petition from the Parliament or the King.
Also included is the text of "The Petition of the Merchants, Traders and others, of the city of London, concerned in the commerce of North America," and other American news.