[draft] Boston 18 February 1796 Sir I conceive to be my duty to submit to your Excellency's perusal and consideration, and extract of a letter from Mr Samuel Waldo to Mr Isaac Winslow of Boston, dated at Portland on the 10th of the present month, and also the copy of a letter from Capt Thomas Vose dated also the 10th instant at Thomaston in the County of Lincoln The contents of these letters (from a different sources and corroborative of each other) are not more alarming to me as an individual, whose property to a large amount appears to be in imminent danger, than they ought to be to the public at large whose laws and Government appear to be threatened with outrage and defiance[.] Confiding in the truth of the information contained in the said letters, added to the circumstances respecting the assault committed [2] upon Mr Beallard a surveyor, while in the execution of a public duty, and the wanton burning of the property of a Mr Jones in Lincoln County, no reasonable doubt exists in my mind, but that the former and menaced outrages were, and are excited and fomented by one Samuel Ely a person said to be obnoxious to the laws, on account of his atrocious Conduct in the insurrection of 1786 in the Western parts of the Commonwealth. The apprehended evil apparently assuming an aspect too powerful for the controul of the ordinary civil magistrates, especially when combined with the state of the circumstances attending the destruction of Mr Jones['s] buildings, constrains me to appeal to the high authority of your Excellency, and solemnly to request that prompt and energetic protection of my property, which as a citizen I have a constitutional and legal right to expect. I presume not to suggest the mode. I ask only for sufficient protection . [3] My person and my property are under the guarrantee [sic] of the laws of my Country and I flatter myself that I shall never have any cause to complain the neither one or the other has been injured with impunity. If however an insurrection or riot should take place, and my property sacrificed to the fury of a banditti, every principle of Justice will insure me pecuniary compensation for damages to guard against which, the social compact and Government have been instituted and established. It is respectfully suggested that any measures which may be judged expedient to counteract or prevent the meditated evil would from the exigency of the case require to be put in to an immediate train of execution[.] I have the honor to be with great respect Your Excellencys Obedient Servant HKnox His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - [docket] To his Excellency the Govr of the Commonwealth 18 Feby. 1796. Boston