Your memorialists have received further advice, that another American privateer has taken and carried into Boston, the Ostend brig Eeirsten, Captain Thomson, bound from that port to this Island, and laden with provisions and plantation stores for the estates of your memorialists, where we fear she will have the same fate.
If the Americans should persist and be authorised to take and confiscate neutral vessels, loaded with the produce of capitulants' estates under the authority of the French government, and those who in return are loaded with the provisions essentially necessary to them, what is the trade of this Island? This must put an effectual end to it; what resources are then left to us?
The inhabitants of this Island are capitulants, and they dare flatter themselves, that under their present government they have the merit of having constantly manifested the most uniform propriety of conduct; the Americans should not only have respected, but protected their property. Bound to do so by their treaty of friendship with France, by the capitulation, and by the certificate and recommendation of the French Governor.
Your memorialists do therefore most earnestly entreat, that your Excellency will be pleased to take this Memorial into consideration.
Council Chamber, in Roseau, the 23d day of November, 1781.[5]
House of Assembly, Roseau, this 23d day of November, 1781.
J. MORSOU, _Speaker of the House of Assembly_.
[5] Extract from an authentic copy of the capitulation, granted by the Marquis de Bouillé to the Island of Dominica.
"ARTICLE 7th. That they (the inhabitants of Dominica) shall pay no other duty to his Most Christian Majesty, than they have paid to his Britannic Majesty, without any charge or imposts. The expenses attending the administration of justice, the Minister's stipends and other customary charges, shall be paid out of the revenue of his Most Christian Majesty in the same manner as under the government of his Britannic Majesty.
"Granted, and that the inhabitants of Dominica may freely export their produce to all parts, on paying into the custom house the duties, which the inhabitants of the French Islands pay in the Islands or in Europe; but the expenses for administration of justice shall be paid by the Colony.