Sir:

Your letter, written by the advice of the Council, requesting this State to furnish Troops as well for the commonwealth of Virginia itself as to oppose the British forces to the Southward, I received, and, as the General Assembly was then sitting, I laid the same before that Body, who was of opinion that it contained a proposition of a strange nature, founded in reasons which have no weight in themselves, and therefore the Assembly requests me to testify their total disapprobation of the proposition, and appeal from the sense of the Council to the wisdom and virtue of the General Assembly of Virginia.