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State of Maine

By William D. Williamson

President of the Senate,

And officiating

Governor of the State:

A Proclamation for a day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise

The innumerable blessings we constantly receive from our Heavenly Father lay us, as rational and accountable beings, under infinite obligations to render Him the most devout gratitude and adoration of our hearts. This people, from difficult and feeble beginnings, has become great and happy: we ourselves have had an existence in a land of delights; and we have been highly exalted in the gifts and enjoyments of privileges. The bounties and comforts of another year are witnesses, that God is peculiarly good to us and ours. As he has shown signal mercies to our fore fathers and to every succeeding age; it has become an immemorial usage to set apart a day in the autumnal season of the year, to offer unto Him the tributes of public thankfulness and dutiful praise.

I have therefore, with the advice and consent of the Council, appointed Thursday, the twenty ninth day of November next, to be observed throughout this State as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise to Almighty God: that we as a people may take more special occasion, at that time, to appear before Him, both at the family altar and in our houses of public worship, with consecrated thank-offerings and expressions of sacred joy for His abounding love towards us and our country, in preserving us from the desolating judgements which are abroad in the earth, and which our iniquities so much deserve; in prospering commercial enterprise so far as to enable those who do business on the great deep, to return in safety unto their homes and partake of the abundance of the seas and of necessaries from foreign parts; in giving to agricultural experiment and to mechanic arts, the encouragement of progressive success; in granting us a favorable seed time, a delightful summer and the