"The undersigned, merchants trading to the Levant, living at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, give respectfully to understand, that the petitioners acknowledge with the most lively gratitude the paternal care which your High Mightinesses have always manifested for the prosperity of the commerce of the Levant, and particularly the advantages procured to the Belgic navigation by the resolutions of your High Mightinesses of the 21st of May, 1770, and of the first of April, 1776; the first of which authorises the directors of the commerce of the Levant, and of the navigation of the Mediterranean, besides the accustomed imposition of six per cent of freight, to require of all foreign vessels coming from the Levant, five per cent of the value of the effects; and the second of which tends to raise considerably the tariff, after which they always tax the abovementioned effects; which has also fully answered to the salutary end of your High Mightinesses, to wit, to inspire a general aversion in foreign ships to suffer themselves to be employed in the transportation of productions from the Levant into the ports of these countries. But, the situation of the navigation of this country by the unfortunate and cruel war, which the King of England unjustly makes upon our dear country, is in fact entirely changed, and almost entirely interrupted and ruined, in such sort, that by the present impossibility to make use of those ships which have not been taken, business in general, and that of the Levant in particular, is in the deplorable condition, even for the account of neutral foreigners, (for that upon our own account is entirely stopped) either to be wholly abandoned, or to be carried on by the means of foreign vessels.