1. They did indeed. On June 15 the committee of nine delivered the report that Cushing enclosed. It contained a number of resolutions, which the House adopted on the 16th by a vote of eighty-three to twenty-eight. Hutchinson, History, III, 291; see also pp. 289–90. An extract of the resolutions, now incomplete, is among BF’s papers in the APS. They declared that the letters were designed to influence British policy by turning it against Massachusetts and preventing redress of grievances; the writers were trying to further their own fortunes through implementation of the Townshend Acts, by the military force that had destroyed the peace of the colony and subverted its morals and good government. The letters from the two Rhode Islanders, Moffatt and Rome, were malicious slanders on the administration of that colony. Whitehall had received and acted upon inflammatory and self-serving letters from individuals and, on the pretext that BF was not a duly constituted agent, had prevented the remonstrances of the House from reaching the throne. Hutchinson and Oliver had lost the confidence of the people, and the King should be asked to remove them. Smyth, Writings, VI, 276–9. The resultant petition was enclosed in Cushing to BF below, June 25.