Commonwealth of Massachusetts. By His Excellency James Bowdoin, Esquire ... A brief, for a charitable contribution [electronic resource] : Whereas by the permissive providence of God, a great number of families in the town of Boston, have from ease and affluence been suddenly reduced to extreme poverty and distress, by a destructive fire, which took place on the evening of the twentieth instant ... Given at the council-chamber, in Boston, the twenty-eighth day of April ... one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven.