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 assure your Excellencies, and, on behalf of my countrymen, I do most solemnly promise and assure you, that no military force shall be kept up in the different States of North America without the consent of the General Congress and that of the Legislatures of those States. You will, therefore, cause the forces of your royal master to be removed; for I can venture to assure you that the Congress have not consented, and probably will not consent, that they be kept up. You have also made the unsolicited offer of concurring "in measures calculated to discharge the debts of America, and to raise the credit and value of the paper circulation." If your Excellencies mean by this to apply for offices in the department of our finance, I am to assure you (which I do with "perfect respect") that it will be necessary to procure very ample recommendations. For, as the English have not yet pursued measures to discharge their own debt and raise the credit and value of their own paper circulation, but, on the contrary, are in a fair way to increase the one and absolutely destroy the other, you will instantly perceive that financiers from that nation would present themselves with the most awkward grace imaginable.