Philadelphia 24 July 1775.
Sir,
Attention to the public business, and an immediate answer to your letter not being necessary, will, I hope, be my excuse for not sooner acknowledging the receipt of your favor of June the 5th.1 The case you mention has not yet come under consideration of the Congress. It is a hard one no doubt, but how to give relief, without again introducing that Commodity to public use, is a question of much difficulty. New York is not a singular instance of such suffering, they are plentifully scattered thro all the existing Colonies. Should Congress determine to admit the sale & the use of what tea is on hand, may not bad men take the advantage of the impossibility of distinguishing this from newly imported Tea & exerting their wits conceal the importation, & thus render abortive our Association against this article, the hateful cause of the present disagreeable situation of N. America. I fear this case is among the number of those unavoidable evils introduced into Society, by the want of public virtue. I am acquainted with very many instances of large quantities of stopt Tea in Virginia, but I am happy to find that the Sufferers bear their misfortune with much patience in consideration of the public good resulting therefrom. It is more than a year now since the use of Tea has been totally banished from Virginia. Do you not think Sir, that Gen. Gage will turn his eyes to N. York for Winter Quarters for part of his Army, and may it not be wise to be prepared for resisting a plan calculated to afford shelter in cold weather to Men who will certainly enter upon our destruction when the Season changes?
I am, with much regard, Sir your most obedient humble Servant.
Rich. H. Lee
Alex. McDougal Esq. N. York.
Lee PapersUniversity of Virginia Archives
Printed in James Curtis Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Volume 1, 1762 - 1778, pp. 143 - 44.
1 Alexander McDougall (1732 - 86), New York merchant and prominent radical leader, subsequently a general in the Continental Army, 1776 - 80, and delegate to Congress, 1781, had written Lee on behalf of local traders who had been unable to dispose of Dutch tea before the Association became effective. He suggested that should Congress allow these merchants to dispose of the tea they had on hand, they would probably use the capital to import arms and ammunition. McDougall to Lee, June 5, 1775. Southern Literary Messenger 30 (April 1860): 261 - 62.