I receive with particular gratification assurances of approbation from the legislature of South Carolina, and will not cease in my endeavors to merit a continuance of it. I pray you to accept my salutations and assurances of great respect and consideration. TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON, NEWBURYPORT AND PROVIDENCE, IN LEGAL TOWN MEETING ASSEMBLED. August 26, 1808. Your representation and request were received on the 22d inst., and have been considered with the attention due to every expression of the sentiments and feelings of so respectable a body of my fellow citizens. No person has seen, with more concern than myself, the inconveniences brought on our country in general by the circumstances of the times in which we happen to live; times to which the history of nations presents no parallel. For years we have been looking as spectators on our brethren of Europe, afflicted by all those evils which necessarily follow an abandonment of the moral rules which bind men and nations together. Connected with them in friendship and commerce, we have happily so far kept aloof from their calamitous conflicts, by a steady observance of justice towards all, by much forbearance and multiplied sacrifices. At length, however, all regard to the rights of others having been thrown aside, the belligerent powers have beset the highway of commercial intercourse with edicts which, taken together, expose our commerce and mariners, under almost every destination, a prey to their fleets and armies. Each party, indeed, would admit our commerce with themselves, with the view of associating us in their war against the other. But we have wished war with neither. Under these circumstances were passed the laws of which you complain, by those delegated to exercise the powers of legislation for you, with every sympathy of a common interest in exercising them faithfully. In reviewing these measures, therefore, we should advert to the difficulties out of which a choice was of necessity to be made. To have submitted our rightful commerce to prohibitions and tributary exactions from others, would have been to surrender our independence. To resist them by arms was war, without consulting the state of things or the choice of the nation. The alternative preferred by the legislature of suspending a commerce placed under such unexampled difficulties, besides saving to our citizens their property, and our mariners to their country, has the peculiar advantage of giving time to the belligerent nations to revise a conduct as contrary to their interests as it is to our rights.