SIR:--Inclosed I transmit your excellency two letters which I received under the signature thereto annexed, that they may be laid before congress. Shall make no comments on them, but submit the disposal of them to their consideration. They are the identical and only letters I ever received from him, and to which I have never returned any manner of answer, nor have I ever had the least personal acquaintance with him, directly or indirectly. The letter of the 2d February, 1781, I received a few days afore with a duplicate of the other, which I received the latter part of July last past, in the high road in Arlington, which I laid before Governor Chittenden and a number of other principal gentlemen of the state (within ten minutes after I received it) for advice; the result, after mature deliberation, and considering the extreme circumstances of the state, was to take no further notice of the matter. The reasons of such a procedure are very obvious to people of this state, when they consider that congress has previously claimed an exclusive right of arbitrating on the existence of Vermont as a separate government. New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay at the same time claiming this territory, either in whole or in part, and exerting their influence to make schisms among the citizens, thereby in a considerable degree weakening this government and exposing its inhabitants to the incursions of the British troops and their savage allies from the province of Quebec. It seems that those governments, regardless of Vermont's contiguous situation to Canada, do not consider that their northern frontiers have been secured by her, nor of the merit of this state in a long and hazardous war, but have flattered themselves with the expectation that this state could not fail (their help) to be desolated by a foreign enemy, and that their exorbitant claims and avaricious designs may at some future period take place in this district of country. Notwithstanding those complicated embarrassments, and I might add discouragements, Vermont during the last campaign defended her frontiers, and at the close of it opened a truce with General Haldimand (who commands the British troops in Canada) in order to settle a cartel for the mutual exchange of prisoners, which continued near four weeks in the same situation, during which time Vermont secured the northern frontiers of her own, and that of the state of New York in consequence of my including the latter in the truce, although that government could have but little claim to my protection. I am confident that congress will not dispute my sincere attachment to the cause of my country, though I do not hesitate to say I am fully grounded in opinion that Vermont has indubitable right to agree on terms of cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, provided the United States persist in rejecting her application for a union