The polite and respectful terms in which you are pleased to communicate your approbation of our conduct, in an important office, demand our most sincere and grateful acknowledgments.1

Honoured by the united suffrages of our fellow-citizens, and animated by a sense of duty, and the most cordial affection for our oppressed country, however unequal to the delicate and arduous task, we undertook it with cheerfulness, and have discharged it with fidelity.

While, from abundant experience, we bear testimony to the unshaken zeal for constitutional liberty, which has ever distinguished the worthy inhabitants of this metropolis, and is nobly exerted at the present alarming crisis, your anxious solicitude for the restoration of that harmony and mutual confidence between the parent state and America, on which the glory and stability of the British Empire so absolutely depend, cannot fail of recommending you to the esteem of all good men, and of holding you up as an example worthy of imitation and applause.

To soften the rigour of the calamities to which, in this tempestuous season, we may be exposed, let us all, with one heart and voice, endeavour to cultivate and cherish a spirit of unanimity and mutual benevolence, and to promote that internal tranquility which can alone give weight to our laudable efforts for the preservation of our freedom, and crown them with success.

We are, gentlemen, with the most affectionate regard, your obliged and very humble servants,