Oppression to seek for refuge among those whom they now persecute will
certainly be admitted to the benefits of naturalization. We labor to
rear an asylum for mankind, and regret that circumstances will not
permit you, gentlemen, to contribute to a design so very agreeable to
your several tempers and dispositions.

But further, your Excellencies say, "We will concur to extend every
freedom to trade that our respective interests can require."
Unfortunately, there is a little difference in these interests which
you might not have found it very easy to reconcile, had the Congress
been disposed to risk their heads by listening to terms which I have
the honor to assure you are treated with ineffable contempt by every
honest Whig in America. The difference I allude to is, that it is your
interest to monopolize our commerce, and it is our interest to trade
with all the world. There is, indeed, a method of cutting this Gordian
knot which, perhaps, no statesman is acute enough to untie. By
reserving to the Parliament of Great Britain the right of determining
what our respective interests require, they might extend the freedom of
trade, or circumscribe it at their pleasure, for what they might call
our respective interests. But I trust it would not be for our mutual
satisfaction. Your "earnest desire to stop the effusion of blood and
the calamities of war" will therefore lead you, on maturer reflection,
to reprobate a plan teeming with discord, and which, in the space of
twenty years, would produce another wild expedition across the
Atlantic, and in a few years more some such commission as that "with
which his Majesty hath been pleased to honor you." We cannot but admire
the generosity of soul which prompts you "to agree that no military
force shall be kept up in the different States of North America without
the consent of the General Congress or particular Assemblies." The only
grateful return we can make for this exemplary condescension is, to