Committees of correspondence were public functionaries of a type first appearing in England, created by the parliamentary party of the 17th century in their struggles with the Stuarts. In 1763, when the English government attempted to enforce the trade and navigation acts on the American colonies after the Peace of Paris, the colonial leaders advised the merchants to hold meetings and appoint committees to memorialize the legislature and correspond with each other to forward a union of interests. This was done in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York 1763–64.
